February 25, 2026; Denver, Colorado, USA; Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic (15) plays in the second half against the Boston Celtics at Ball Arena. Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-Imagn Images The NBA’s best offense meets the league’s best defense on Friday when the Denver Nuggets visit the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The Nuggets entered the game with an NBA-best offensive rating of 120.7, while the Thunder led the league with a defensive rating (points allowed per 100) of 106.4.
Denver coach David Adelman has been working to strengthen his team’s defense for most of the season, and progress was seen Wednesday in a 103-84 win over Boston, the Nuggets’ best defensive performance of the season.
“If we’re going to do something special this season, our defense has to come together,” Adelman said. “…The challenge for OKC will continue next time, so we need to be more consistent.”
This will be Denver’s first trip to Oklahoma City since the Thunder eliminated the Nuggets with a 125-93 win in Game 7 of their second-round series last May.
But neither team is close to full strength.
Denver’s Jamal Murray left Wednesday’s game due to an illness, and the Nuggets also remain without Peyton Watson and Aaron Gordon, who are recovering from hamstring injuries.
Oklahoma City had just nine players available for the second half of Wednesday’s 124-116 loss at Detroit, and one of those players played less than a minute.
The Thunder were already without starters Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein and key reserves Ajay Mitchell and Alex Caruso for that game.
Isaiah Cho and Brandon Carlson left with injuries in the first half of Wednesday’s loss.
The Thunder will likely have more players available on Friday, but expect Jaylin Williams to continue to play a key role.
Williams scored a career-high 30 points in a loss to the Pistons, helping keep Oklahoma City in the game until the final minute despite the injury.
“We have a very resilient group of people,” Williams said. “We’ve been in a lot of different situations and I think we’re going to go the same way no matter what situation we’re in. We’re going to go out there and leave it all on the court and we’re going to play defense and we’re going to play hard and those types of things.
“And I think the fact that we’re a team that does the same thing no matter who goes in gives us a chance in every game.”
Friday’s game will be the second of four meetings between the teams this season.
The Thunder won their first game, 121-111, on February 1 in Denver.
While certainly not front and center of the game, this will be the first matchup between fellow Serbians, the Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic and the Thunder’s Nikola Topic.
Topick, who missed last season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament and missed the first 55 games this season after being diagnosed with testicular cancer in the offseason, has appeared in Oklahoma City’s final five games, averaging 3.2 points and 2.0 assists in more than 10 minutes per game.
Jokic is looking forward to finally sharing an NBA court with Topic after the two became teammates on the Serbia national team.
“He’s a really good guy,” Jokic said. “He’s really talented. He is the future of Serbian basketball. great. … He’s fighting for something that’s probably more important, the most important thing, and he’s victorious.”
–Field level media
